Kibosh put on county proposal

Housing plan killed by planners; Tejon Pass ‘mini-city’ gets go-ahead

County planners killed one proposed development this week that would add 335 homes up Interstate 5 from Castaic, but another developer is moving ahead with a 23,000-home “mini-city” in Tejon Pass.

Centennial, a plan that’s been on the books for more than a decade, will go before county planners soon with new environmental documents, said Barbara Casey, spokeswoman for developer Centennial Founders LLC.

“We have tremendous support from the people,” Casey said of the residents of the Gorman area, where the mini-city would be located. “They will have all kinds of services — their own doctors, theaters where their kids can work. Right now, they have to come to Santa Clarita for that.”

Previously filed documents for Centennial stated residents would both live and work in their mountaintop town close to the Kern County line.

While Centennial developers plan their return to the fast track, one smaller developer saw his project killed Tuesday.

A long-standing plan by a member of the Ralphs grocery store family to build 335 homes north of Castaic was the latest project to get the ax from county planners who want to clear the books of long-pending developments that haven’t been updated.

James L. Ralphs had planned to rezone farmland so that he could build 335 homes on 80 acres of land near Gorman Post Road and Interstate 5, about two miles south of the proposed Centennial.

On Tuesday, county planners killed the project due to inactivity.

More than 70 similar land development deals slated for the Santa Clarita Valley are also expected to get the ax in the next few months, county planner Ramon Cordova said two weeks ago.

Cordova said this week that Ralphs had been notified of the decision to cancel his project and had not responded.